ITT: In depth discussion about Xin's strengths/weaknesses and balance changes

Hi guys,

Before I go on with this thread i suppose i should explain myself so that i have some form of credibility. I am Eyesack, a summoner who plays on the NA server. I'm a xin main, the highest rated xin main in na, and toplists lists me as the second best xin player in the world. http://www.lolskill.net/top/highest-lolskillscore?filterChampion=5&filterRealm= http://na.op.gg/ranking/champions/name=xinzhao Just to be clear -- I'm not crazy high rated. I float around diamond 1 and 2 and i might make it to masters. I'm not that great of a player mechanically imo. I just show up when you look at xin zhao stats on these websites because i play him quite a bit.

I should also point out that this post is a massive wall of text. Read the tl;dr if you aren't that interested in reading about xin.

Despite what you may think about Xin, he is not considered a viable champion at the higher echelons of play. Only one trick ponies like myself and a few others (I'm lookin at you Tulion) have managed to play him with any success at high diamond/masters. Bjergsen even said on stream last night, after he played against a xin, 'Xin is just a trash champion right now'. I'm paraphrasing there of course i can't quite remember his exact words but he essentially said xin zhao is not playable currently. To me, as a xin zhao main, it feelsbadman to hear things like that from a professional player. And it's especially bad to know that its probably true.

This doesn't sit well with me. In fact, I find it sad that my favorite champion is always one of the most complained about champions when he is good, resulting in him getting mulitple nerfs without compensation the patch after he is buffed. Not only did xin get the 20% as nerf on his w, which was HUGE, but they hit the ap scaling on his w, removing nashors as a core item, and then also reworked warlord's bloodlust that same patch. Basically xin got hit where it hurts, right in the sustain. But the nerfs made sense. Xin's sustain at that time made him so tanky that he was a really forgiving champion to play. It lowered the skillcap of the champion through sheer survivability, as if he wasn't already enough of a monster in low level play.

The sad fact is that Xin's kit is so linear that it is difficult to outplay people, and that is the essence of good champion design. Being rewarded for doing things well and being punished for fucking up, and that should occur on both sides of champion interaction. I should feel like i earned the outcome of an engage, be it that i fucked up and lost, or i played really well and won out. It shouldn't ever be, "welp, not really anything i can do here" and on the flip side "rofl theres literally nothing this guy can do at all about me killing him". The only situation where xin can shine and outplay people is with his ultimate: pulling off the perfect ulti flash XINSEC or ulting that mid-headbutt alistar away from you while you kill his adc. Xin's ultimate is one of the biggest reason's why i play xin aside from his character, the fact that he's a fighter champion, and a badass mofo demacian legend called x to da z.

Aside from Xin's ult however, he's a pretty linear champion

First I'm going to talk about his weaknesses, then his strengths, and I'm going to try my best to go in depth here, since I'll probably use this thread later if i choose to make a guide.

WEAKNESSES:

1. For one, Xin is a purely melee champion. He has no way to 'poke' at all. He has no way to deal damage to a champion without taking damage. This is an obvious weakness and one that is shared by many melee champions.

2. Xin's tankyness is not reliable. You sometimes will not ult more than one person and sometimes you will not manage to get lots of auto attacks off for your w heal (or any, for that matter). This leads him to being either an unkillable monster or completely useless.

3. Very immobile. His only mobility comes from a single target 550 range dash on a 12 second cooldown. Yes, the cooldown can be lowered by his q procs but if you can't reach your target then you can't expect to auto attack them 3 times.

4. Only way to disengage is to ult someone away, which is using your 120/110/100 sec cd ult just to escape, and which doesn't work on his challenged target. Xin can possibly e away to a minion or jungle creep but this option is not always available.

5. Xin's hard cc is difficult to use in teamfights. It takes 3 hits to pop someone up with your q. An adc will dash away the moment you audacious charge them, or you'll just get nado'd or rooted or whatever cc the other team has at their disposal. Your ult also doesn't cc the person you are targeting. You will probably never hard cc any of the enemy teams carries in a teamfight against competent players.

6. Xin is a jungler with an abysmal clear speed. The change to his e cd not scaling down with level only exacerbated this problem. The 25%-75% bonus damage every third hit helps but the problem has always been his inability to kill the raptor and wolf camps quick enough.

STRENGTHS:

1. In-kit sustain that scales with attack speed, attack damage, and ability power. This sustain is better than simple lifesteal because it heals for the same value even when attacking tankier targets, which makes Xin a great anti-tank fighter if you build rageblade. Battle cry does however force xin into being a feast or famine champion. If he is ahead enough to survive some burst and heal over the duration of a fight, his w can be extremely valuable in terms of survivability/tankiness. It does not help however when the other team has lots of damage and just kills him very quickly because he has this sustain in place of other tank stats. I should also mention that this allows xin to always be near full hp when jungling and makes him capable of doing an early baron or perhaps even soloing it.

2. Xin has extremely high single target damage if he builds damage items and manages to get on top of a carry. Have you ever built youmuus/infinity edge/merc scimitar on xin before? You will 100-0 adcs in 1 second with that build. E -> Auto -> Q and they're dead. Try it, it's pretty fun, you just have to be the god of positioning or play against idiots and it will work. The sheer amount of damage xin does especially now with the free crits catches people off guard.

3. Very disruptive if he can get those three talon strikes off. This means your dash and your as boost will be on low cds as well, and your ult can come back up really quickly. If not diving the enemy carry you can always just act as a tank-shredding peel bot and it's pretty effective. You can ult multiple people off of your adc and you can pop up/slow someone as well, while also shredding that person's armor for your adc and yourself to pump out more damage. I should also mention that with 40% cdr you can can pop someone up every 4 seconds or so.

4. Crescent sweep can make #LC$BIGPLAYS if used correctly. Every few games I'll land one of those amazing flank ulti-flash plays that just auto wins a fight. It's also super fun to pull this off. I should also mention that if you ult an entire team you will be VERY tanky, getting a free 75-125 armor and mr, which is only 5 more than rank 5 graves e but graves is a balanced champion so i probably shouldn't even mention that Kappa.

So xin has clear stengths and he has clear weaknesses. He has some outplay potential on his end via crescent sweep and it is VERY easy to outplay a xin on the other end (Just disengage or cc him after he uses e, if he doesn't land any three talon strikes he is literally a minion ripe for kiting). Normally, I'd say xin is fine as he is. He honestly seems to be a healthy champion. But he isn't a viable champion. How can a champion be healthy and not be viable, you say? Well, other champions, the top picks currently, are not so healthy. They can do everything xin can do but better. Better cc, disengage, mobility, clear speed, tankyness, peel, damage -- you name it. There is only ONE thing xin is better at doing than all the other top picks right now, and that is he has better sustain over a long fight than probably any other champion in the game.

His sustain is his greatest strength. It is the thing that makes him unique, the thing that makes him stand out. But the moment it was good enough for him to be picked, pretty much pick/ban status from bronze to diamond, it was decided that xin was overpowered and that he needed nerfs. Why? Because his sustain was unhealthy. It wasn't unhealthy in the same sense that all the other broken champions are currently unhealthy, no. It was uniquely unhealthy. Xin was an abomination comparable to how strong kindred is right now, but rather than his damage, mobility, and utility being the problem it was simply his sustain.

So all this just to say that I don't think buffing xin's sustain to emphasize his niche as the heal-on-hit fighter is the direction we should take him. Instead, we should give him sort of utility. I have numerous ideas about how to make xin playable in high elo and competitive. I'm pretty much constantly coming up with them. Not that that means anything. I could easily create a 'solution' that just creates more problems for the champion. Like if xin was given an alistar-esque cleanse on his ult. It would be fucking awesome, i would be able to audacious charge someone audaciously. Instead of having to fearfully audacious charge them because I'm terrified i'll get cc chained before i can even press r. Which by the way happens A LOT. But at the end of the day giving a xin a cleanse in kit would just make him even more of a complained about champion. It would also not change his ultimate from being his only outplay ability.

If I was going to change xin i would definitely give him some sort of utility. First off I'd get rid of that boring ass 'every third hit crits' BORING THREE HIT PASSIVE. God it's so boring its unbelievable. Xin literally already has a 3 hit passive so to buff him you give him ANOTHER THREE HIT PASSIVE? Someone at riot must have a giant boner for three hit passives. Not to mention this free crit has FUCKED me so many times. What do you mean this crit fucked you Eyesack how can a free crit ever be detrimental. I'll tell you how. Xin's auto attack crit animation actually takes longer to complete than his regular auto attack animation. How does this fuck me over? I've been playing xin for a long time. I was used to his normal auto animation. I never built crit because they made that change that made his q not scale with crit anymore and ever since then it's not really been worth it to build crit on xin. But again, how does me not being used to this animation actually fuck me over? Well, I miss auto attacks. I'll go in for the ol' E -> Auto -> Q and instead I'll wind up just E -> Q'ing because the first auto winds up being his dumb ass crit animation and instead of finishing the attack i'll press Q and cancel it into just a Q empowered auto. I can't tell you how many times this happens while jungling AND when i'm trying to kill someone.

So yeah, get rid of that garbage three hit passive and give xin some compensational utility. Tie it to his actual passive. Give him movespeed when moving towards his challenged target or make it so that his e is a skillshot or make it so that his e doesn't challenge people so i can e -> r someone into my team. 'but that would be busted' (meanwhile gragas exists) Or do something to help xin's jungle clear or maybe buff his base defensive stats but PLEASE get rid of his free crits and give him something USEFUL. Hell, i'd even like something along the lines of 'the warriors spirit' - xin gains X% movespeed for 3 seconds after getting out of a cc. Give me something real so i'm not a minion after using my e and getting 'outplayed' by arcane shift.

Please, if you are a riot employee, tell whoever balances this game to read this thread before considering any changes to xin. He does not need free crits in order to be playable, he needs some amount of mobility or utility to keep up with pool of deny deny deny champions in this game.

And please, if you are someone who took the time to read this thread, leave a comment below. Make sure someone sees this.

tl;dr: Get rid of crit every third hit and then give xin some utility/mobility as compensation.